Conventional managed information environments typically include a plurality of interconnected manageable entities, or nodes. In such an environment having a storage area network (SAN), the manageable entities may include storage arrays, connectivity devices and host entities, collectively operable to provide information storage and retrieval services to users. In a large storage area network, the number of nodes may be substantial.
In such a storage area network, software entities known as agents are responsive to a management application for managing the nodes in the SAN. The agents typically execute on a host computer and are in communication with manageable entities in the SAN responsive to the agent for providing configuration and status information, and for receiving instructions from the management application. In a typical conventional SAN, the agents manage and monitor a variety of manageable entities having different functions, and often emanating from different vendors. Further, connectivity, equipment changes and maintenance may affect the presence and status of the various manageable entities. Therefore, the configuration of the SAN may be complex and dynamic.
Accordingly, the SAN may adapt agents to a particular configuration in the SAN. The agents may be responsible for general tasks of a large number of nodes or manageable entities, or may have a more specialized role in handling a smaller number of specialized or vendor specific manageable entities. Nonetheless, the agent is communicative with the manageable entities for which it is responsible. Therefore, conventional SAN agents typically employ an application programming interface (API) conversant with a particular manageable entity and operable to manage and monitor the manageable entity.
Often, it is desirable to simulate the SAN for testing and development purposes. Simulation may avoid the need to duplicate a possibly large configuration of physical nodes. Simulation agents may be developed or modified to emulate the behavior of a storage array to the invoking SAN server. The conventional simulation agents may be configured with information similar to that which is available via the actual API employed for accessing the actual counterpart storage array. Therefore, a conventional server may be communicative with a set of simulation agents, each operable to receive requests and send responses emulative of an agent serving an actual storage array.